Chapter 16
The music room was next; smaller than the other rooms, more intimate, with tall windows that let in the afternoon light. A pianoforte sat in the corner, its lid closed, its surface covered with a layer of dust that suggested it hadn't been touched in years.
"My mother played," Frederick said, moving to stand beside the instrument. "I remember the sound of it; just fragments, really, bits of melody that surface sometimes when I'm not expecting them. She died when I was six, but the music stayed."
Lydia watched him run his fingers along the piano's edge, leaving trails in the dust.
"After she died, my father had it covered. He said the sound reminded him of her, and he couldn't bear it." Frederick’s voice was soft. "I used to think that meant he loved her. That he was so devastated by her death that even the memory of her music was too painful."
"But?"
"But now I think he just didn't want to be reminded of feeling anything at all.
It wasn't that the memory was too painful; it was that feeling pain was too inconvenient.
" He lifted the piano's lid, revealing keys that were yellowed with age but still intact.
"I've never heard anyone play this since she died. Almost twenty-five years of silence."
"Do you play?"
"No. My father didn't see the point of teaching me.
Music was for women, he said. Dukes had more important things to learn.
" Frederick pressed a key; a single note that rang through the dusty room, clear and pure and somehow heartbreaking.
"I always wondered what it would sound like if someone played it again.
Whether it would still work. Whether her music is still in there somewhere, waiting to come out. "
Lydia moved to stand beside him. She wasn't musical, had never had the time or the training, but she could read the longing on his face.
"Maybe someday you'll find someone to play it," she said.
"Maybe." He let the lid fall closed again. "Or maybe some silences are meant to stay silent."
They stood there for a moment, neither quite willing to move on. The room felt heavy with memory, with all the music that had never been played and might never be.
"Show me something happy," Lydia said finally. "Something that isn't full of ghosts."
Frederick thought for a moment. Then his face lit up with an expression she'd never seen before, something almost mischievous.
"Follow me."
***
He led her through a maze of corridors and staircases, past rooms she barely had time to glimpse, until they reached a door that looked like all the others but somehow felt different.
"The servants' passage to the kitchen garden," Frederick explained, opening the door. "I used to sneak out this way when I was young. It was the only part of the house my father never bothered to monitor."
Beyond the door was a walled garden, small but beautifully maintained, with raised beds full of herbs and vegetables and a single ancient apple tree in the centre. The walls were high enough to block the wind, creating a pocket of warmth that felt almost Mediterranean despite the English autumn.
"The kitchen garden?" Lydia looked around, surprised. "This is your happy memory?"
"Not the garden. What's in the garden?" Frederick led her to the far corner, where a stone bench sat beneath a climbing rose that had long since finished blooming.
"I used to come here when everything else got to be too much.
I used to sit on this bench and watch the gardeners work and pretend I was somewhere else. Someone else."
He sat, and after a moment, Lydia sat beside him.
"When I was eight," Frederick said, "I decided I was going to run away.
I packed a bag, a change of clothes, some bread I'd stolen from the kitchen, a book of adventure stories, and I was going to climb over that wall and just..
. disappear. Become a sailor, maybe, or an explorer.
Someone without a title or expectations or a father who looked through me like I wasn't there. "
"What stopped you?"
"Mrs Chen. The cook. She found me in this garden with my bag, trying to figure out how to scale the wall without killing myself.
" He smiled at the memory. "She didn't tell my father.
Didn't lecture me or threaten me or anything like that.
She just sat down beside me, right here, on this bench, and asked me where I was planning to go. "
"What did you tell her?"
"Anywhere. Nowhere. I didn't really have a plan.
I just wanted to be somewhere I wasn't invisible.
" Frederick’s voice was soft. "She told me that running away wasn't the answer.
That wherever I went, I'd still be myself, still carrying everything I was trying to escape.
She said the only way to really change things was to stay and fight.
To become someone different in the place where I already was. "
"That's good advice."
"I didn't understand it at the time. I was eight.
I thought she was just trying to keep me out of trouble.
" He leaned back against the wall, his eyes distant.
"But I think about it now, and I realise she was right.
Running away wouldn't have solved anything.
I would just have been a lonely child in a different place, instead of a lonely child here. "
"So, you stayed."
"I stayed. I stopped trying to run and started trying to survive instead.
I built walls around myself, learned to be cold, and became exactly what my father wanted me to be.
" He turned to look at her. "Until you. You're the first person who's ever made me want to tear those walls down instead of building them higher. "
"I'm not trying to…"
"I know. That's why it works." He took her hand. "You don't want anything from me. Not the title, not the money, not anything I could give you that you couldn't find somewhere else. You just want.......Me. And I don't know what to do with that. I've never known what to do with that."
"You're doing fine."
"Am I? Because most of the time I feel like I'm making it up as I go along. Like I'm learning a language I should have learned as a child, and everyone can tell I'm not fluent."
"Everyone feels like that sometimes. The difference is you're actually trying."
Frederick was quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing patterns on the back of her hand.
"My aunt thinks you're a fortune hunter," he said finally. "She thinks you've identified me as vulnerable and you're exploiting it for your own gain."
"I know. You told me."
"Stay," he said. "For a while. Watch the light change and the shadows lengthen and remember that somewhere in this enormous, empty house, there's one corner that's actually happy."
"I can do that."
"Good."
They sat there together until the autumn sun began to sink toward the horizon, casting long shadows across the garden and painting everything in shades of gold. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them needed to.
Some things were better said in silence.
***
The third day, Boggins requested a formal audience.
"Requested?" Frederick looked at his valet with bewilderment. "You don't request audiences. You just... appear. And make pointed comments about my wardrobe."
"This is a different matter, Your Grace." Boggins' expression was unreadable, but there was something in his posture, a stiffness that suggested this was important. "Miss Fletcher should be present."
"Lydia? Why?"
"Because what I have to say concerns her as much as it concerns you." Boggins' gaze was steady. "I believe she's arriving shortly? I took the liberty of sending word that her presence would be appreciated."
Frederick stared at him. In all those years, Boggins had never done anything like this. He had never presumed to invite guests, never inserted himself into Frederick’s personal affairs, never stepped outside the carefully defined boundaries of his role.
"What's going on?"
"I would prefer to explain only once, Your Grace. With both parties present."
As if on cue, there was a knock at the sitting room door—the small sitting room, the one Frederick had started using since Lydia began visiting, because it felt more convenient.
"That will be Miss Fletcher," Boggins said. "Shall I admit her?"
"Yes. Obviously. What is…" Frederick broke off, frustrated. "Fine. We'll do this your way."
Boggins inclined his head and went to answer the door.
A few minutes later, they were seated in the sitting room; Frederick and Lydia on the small sofa, Boggins in a chair across from them.
It was, Frederick reflected, possibly the strangest arrangement he had ever been part of.
Servants didn't sit in chairs and request audiences. It simply wasn't done.
And yet here they were.
"Thank you for coming, Miss Fletcher," Boggins said. "I apologise for the irregular nature of this summons."
"It's fine. I'm just confused." Lydia glanced at Frederick. "Is something amiss?"
"I don't know. Boggins won't tell me." Frederick turned to his valet. "Well? You have our attention. What is this about?"
Boggins took a moment to prepare tea before answering; an elaborate ritual that Lydia recognised as the work of a man buying time, gathering his thoughts. The leaves were measured with precision, the water poured at exactly the right temperature, the steep timed to the second.
"Tea first," he said. "What I have to say deserves proper accompaniment."
Only when they were both settled with their tea did he pour his own cup and take his seat.
"I have served this family for many years," he began. "I started as a footman under His Grace's grandfather, worked my way up through the usual channels, and was appointed valet to His Grace upon his ascension to the title. In that time, I have watched three generations of Hawthornes live and die."
"Boggins…"